Stephen Hume: Mind Canada’s transportation plan gap

NDP leader’s call for high-speed rail touches on issue that this country lacks a well-planned national strategy

The use of bullet trains shows Europe, the Middle East and Asia invest in high-speed rail corridors which link dynamic economic centres across countries, regions and continents. No such high-speed rail strategy appears to exist in Canada.

Photograph by: Jiao Hongtao
, AP

Federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair is right to draw attention to — dare I say it — the slow motion train wreck that is Canada’s non-strategy for developing high-speed public rail.

Here we are in the world’s second-largest country — it’s farther from Vancouver to Halifax than it is from here to South America. We face the daunting prospect of growing a diversified 21st century economy in the face of stiff international competition. And intensifying constraints from climate change are on the horizon. Yet we still don’t have a well-planned national high-speed rail strategy.

Instead, half a century after Japan pioneered the technology, we still have jealous city-states patching together self-contained urban transit systems they see as frills in backwards provincial fiefdoms which seem to think their transit obligations end with capital funding rather than operational sustainability.

Meanwhile, our federal government obsesses over how to get unprocessed natural resources out of the country as fast as it can while ignoring the economic value released by moving human capital swiftly and efficiently. It’s like selling off the furniture to buy bingo tokens instead of fixing the plumbing.

Bullet-train-friendly Europe and Asia, even Middle Eastern nations, invest aggressively in high-speed rail corridors which link dynamic economic centres across countries, regions and continents. Model A Canada dodders along in its dotty, self-absorbed love affair with the increasingly obsolete Dodomobile.

Let’s see, you can catch a train from London to Paris that will whisk you under the English Channel at close to 300 kilometres per hour, a trip which takes about the same length of time as it does to get on and off a ferry travelling 40 kilometres between Swartz Bay and Tsawwassen.

Nobody’s suggesting replacing the ferry system with a tunnel and super trains, it’s just an example by way of comparison — although it’s worth noting that more than five million passengers a year make the journey.

But what’s wrong with contemplating a high-speed train that you could catch at six in the morning in downtown Vancouver, get off at 9 a.m. for meetings in Silicon Valley and be home for supper?

They do this in Europe and Asia. Faster trains than London-Paris zip through corridors linking Germany, Belgium and France. High-speed rail in Spain ties Madrid to Barcelona. There’s a high-speed rail spine in Italy that connects Turin to Salerno, with stops in Milan, Bologna, Rome and Naples. The Italian route offers more than 72 daily connections between cities.

In France, Japan and China, trains are already reaching speeds matching commuter aircraft. Bullet trains and public investments in fast, efficient transit are key parts of the infrastructure supporting the world’s most vigorous economy.

South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Australia all have ambitious plans.

So where is Canada’s plan? Drowned like the proverbial kitten in a barrel of bitumen, it seems. Instead, Ottawa spends its credibility in futile denial of the impact of oilsands development for which it is taking an international beating over greenhouse gas emissions.

But an electric high-speed rail service linking Edmonton and Calgary, for example, would simultaneously reduce greenhouse emissions by millions of tonnes. It would offset construction costs for massive freeway expansion and its subsequent carbon footprint. Furthermore, Alberta government studies show a high-speed rail corridor would generate billions in economic benefits.

Where’s Canada’s plan for rolling out a high-speed rail corridor that would run from Quebec City through Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton and Windsor — and why stop there; why not go on to Detroit and Chicago?

Similar links could easily extend from Calgary through Regina to Winnipeg and on to Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Chicago. And while the mountains preclude high speed trains from west to east in B.C., nothing prevents a corridor linking Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Trains, on average, have about one-third the carbon footprint of your typical family SUV and about half that of a short haul flight — aircraft footprints rise steeply on longer hauls because of the fuel burned climbing to cruising altitude. Right now, about 1.8 million passengers a year fly from Vancouver to cities down the West Coast.

Were Canada to use its vast and abundant natural gas supplies to generate electricity dedicated to public high-speed train systems instead of simply selling it offshore at fire sale prices, the hit on greenhouse gas emissions compared to air and motor vehicle transportation would be dramatic. Not to mention the spinoff benefits in domestic economic activity as opposed to the economic activity now exported to competing countries.

Frankly, this looks like a no-brainer that everyone else has figured out while we suck our thumb.

The use of bullet trains shows Europe, the Middle East and Asia invest in high-speed rail corridors which link dynamic economic centres across countries, regions and continents. No such high-speed rail strategy appears to exist in Canada.

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